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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1999-12-29, Page 22PAGE 22. THE CITIZEN MILLENNIUM ISSUE, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1999. Hamlet of Winthrop Toll gates helped pay cost of former Gravel Rcl. Cavan United Church today Winthrop is situated at the inter­ section of Huron County Rds. 12 (North Line) and 17 (Winthrop Rd.) in McKillop Twp. The first road through the area was known as north Gravel Road and ran from Seaforth to Paisley. It was built because of a mill in Egmondville. Toll gates to help pay the cost of maintenance had disappeared by 1873. The first record of a postal outlet in Winthrop is in 1868, though it is believed Andrew Govenlock and his family settled the area in 1834. Winthrop has had a genera! store in almost the same location for more than 140 years. Alex Murchie built a house in 1858 on North Gravel road at Ballabay or Bailey Bay. Several years later he opened a post office and store and it was called Winthrop. The community soon had a grist and sawmill, cheese and butter facto­ ry, telegraph office, a church, a school house, a blacksmith, hotel, brick yard and a couple of stores. Govenlock built a steam-powered saw mill in 1873, just south of the second toll gate, and his Victoria Grist Mill was built in Winthrop the following year. The general store opened in 1875. A frame structure for the first Cavan Church was built in 1875. The current brick building was construct­ ed in 1907. The old church and school building were sold that year. As with most Presbyterian congre­ gations in the area, Cavan participat­ ed in church union and became a United Church in 1925. The congre­ gation still gathers today. An early record shows a Methodist Episcopal Church one and a quarter miles east of Winthrop in 1876. Bethel Methodist Church, on Cone. 12 (Hullett-McKillop Rd.), offered services from 1878 to 1962 when it was closed and the building moved to Walton. There it was used as a shop. The Winthrop Cheese Factory opened in 1875. It burned in 1887, but was rebuilt the following year. The factory did very well, winning prizes at several fairs. A hall for meetings and entertain­ ment was added in 1904. The factory was again destroyed by fire in 1914, but was functioning again in 1915. It is unclear if the building was unused between 1918 and 1926 when the L.O.L. 813 pur­ chased it. The Loyal Orange Lodge had been in existence since 1857. In the 1950s, the general store was listed for sale, by only the third owner in almost 100 years. The building was tom down and a new store was built just behind the origi­ nal location. Today it is run by Doug and Gail Schroeder. The first school for Winthrop was built on the southwest comer of Lot 26, Cone. 9 (Winthrop Rd.) of McKillop Twp. in 1873. Forty-four years later it was discovered that land had actually been in another landowners bush, but the correction was never made. Prior to the con­ struction school had been taught in another building, later used as a store, chopping mill and granary. S.S. No. 10 was built in 1907. The school closed with centralization in the 1960s. The municipal building was built in 1965 as a centennial project. It closed in 1999 as the township began to work through the process of amal­ gamating with neighbouring munici­ palities. Winthrop now boasts a four-acre recreation field. () Proposed road names Include this keepsake in your family time capsule. There have been many newspapers in In 1985, after the villages of Blyth and Brussels had been without a newspaper of their own for three years, a group of citizens led by Sheila Richards in Brussels and Keith Roulston of Blyth were convinced a new newspaper was needed to jointly serve the two communities. Nearly 50 others agreed, purchasing shares in a new community-owned newspaper called The North Huron Citizen. The Citizen is only the most recent publication in a history of newspaper publishing in the twro communities that dates back to 1873 The Brussels Post, the longest-running newspaper during Brussels history was first published in 1873- Though the McGillicuddy brothers, Thomas and Daniel, had a rough time after the printing of the first paper on July 10, 1873, The Post did become a prosperous business. Four years after the first press run, The Post moved to a new location, specially built for the business. W.H. Kerr, with a keen interest in municipal politics (he served as Brussels reeve for seven years and Huron County warden in 1903), assumed ownership in 1880. The business stayed in the family until April 1, 1932, when Kerr’s son, J.L. passed away. Roy Kennedy, son of A.R. Kennedy, the former editor of the Stratford Beacon, purchased the paper in 1933 He graduated from Beal Technical School of Printing and worked at the Beacon-Herald before coming to Brussels. Kennedy’s brother, Hugh worked at The Post for a time as did his wife, Evelyn. She continued as the Brussels correspondent even after the paper was absorbed by 'The Huron Expositor in 1982. During the Kennedy years The Post was located in the building at the southeast corner of Mill and Turnberry Sts. Blyth got its first newspaper in 1876 when 77?c Review started publishing. It soon died and. The Record was born but died only a year later. The Standard was born in 1892 when A. E. Baldwin purchased the old Review's printing plant. Baldwin operated the newspaper until he sold it to J.I1.R. Elliott, father of Gordon Elliott, in 1910. The newspaper was then located where the village office is today. After 22 years Mr. Elliott sold the newspaper to concentrate on his insurance business. A.W. Robinson bought the equipment and operated the newspaper for the next six years. In 1938 Kenneth and Gladys Whitmore Roy and Evelyn Kennedy posed during the printing of their last issue of The Post in December 1971 (top left). Below left, in 1974 Doug Whitmore (left) and Harvey McCallum prepare to dismantle the press that printed The Blyth Standard for many years. It had been three years since the last newspaper rolled off the press. purchased The Standard and moved it to the location where their grandson Ken now operates Blyth Printing. After Mr. Whitmore died, his wife and son Douglas and his wife Lorna ran the paper until they sold it in 1971 to Keith and Jill Roulston who operated it for a short time from the house on the corner of Westmoreland and Queen St., next to Bainton's, then across the street where Paul and Catherine Safr live (formerly The Pottery). Later The Standard was located at 250 Queen St. South until it was discontinued and included in the Clinton News-Record in 1982. In 1977 the Roulstons sold 7Z?e Standard to A.Y. McLean of McLean Brothers Publishing in Seaforth who operated the newspaper until selling it to Signal-Star Publishing in 1982. The newspaper industry has changed greatly since the days of The Post and The Review. In those days newspapers were printed two pages at a time C itizenTheNorthHuron Your community-owned newspaper area since 1873 on small, hand-operated presses. Type was set one letter at a time with each letter hand-picked from a cabinet, of type. Later electricity was used to power presses and speed production but small newspapers like The Standard and The Post were still printed two pages at a time and printing took up a good part of the week. Typesetting was simplified with the introduction of the Linotype on which an operator could type a letter and a mold of that letter would be put in place on a line. When a line of type was completed hot lead was cast into the moulds and a lead slug containing all the letters in the line was produced. There was still much work cutting the lead slugs to size and fitting all the slugs needed for a page into a form which was put on the press for printing. As a result most newspapers were only about eight pages in length. Because printing photos was an expensive and complicated process, The Post and The Standard contained few photos. When the Kennedy family sold The Post and the Roulstons bought The Standard, both newspapers were switched to the off-set printing technology which used a photographic process to transfer a paper version of the newspaper page to a printing plate and then on to a high-speed rotary press. Both newspapers were no longer printed in their own plant but at the Signal-Star Publishing printing plant in Goderich. A newspaper several times larger than the old eight-page Post or Standard can now be printed in 90 minutes. In the 1970s computerized phototypesetting was introduced with news typed into a machine which shone light through a film strip containing all letters of the alphabet and onto a strip of photographic paper, producing a high-quality image to be photographed. In the 1990s computerization went further. Today all photographs are scanned into computers at The Citizen's Blyth office and entire pages containing type, headlines, photos and ads are assembled on modern high-speed Apple McIntosh G3 computers. The changes in technology have resulted not only in better and faster production of the newspaper out have also allowed more of the paper’s resources to be concentrated on collection and writing of news. Today The Citizen, and its sister publication the farm magazine The Rural Voice, employ eight full-time and five part-time people at two locations, 425 Turnberry St. in Brussels and 136 Queen St. S. in Blyth.